“It was a real honor to receive such a prestigious award,” he says.

Of course the calls will only keep coming.

In the meantime, Alex sat down for an interview to explain about how he and Lindsay got from here to there, rising in their careers to receive this mark of achievement from Hollywood on their ability as animators, as artists.

Q: Congratulations on the Emmy! What was it like to win? 

Alex Small-Butera: It’s a really fancy event. There’s like a whole red carpet, and the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles where the awards ceremony takes place is a gigantic theater. Everyone’s all dressed up. My award wasn’t televised, but I still got to make a little speech in front of a group of people.

Q: How did you get involved with animated television shows?

Alex Small-Butera: It was a number of years ago that we were contacted by Adventure Time to do a special sequence for one of their episodes, called “Ketchup.” That was the one for which Lindsay won an Emmy — she did all the design and direction for three different animation styles — and then they had us back to do more, including working on Fionna and Cake.

Q: What had you been doing before?

Alex: We had been doing different things — a web series called Baman Piderman, development work on the video game Later Alligator, other things along the way.  

Q: When did the two of you start working together?

Alex: Well, we met at MassArt in 2005 — our dorm rooms were right next to each other in the Artists’ Residence — and a year later we worked together on a homework assignment for the Ottawa International Animation Festival. So I guess you could say we’ve been collaborating for 18 years. I graduated in ’08, Lindsay in ’09, and we got married in 2010.

Q: MassArt won’t try to take credit for the love connection, but how would you say your MassArt education helped you with your career?

Alex: It gave me a kind of scrappiness with making art that I wouldn’t have gotten at another school. There’s a certain resourcefulness that I learned at MassArt. You can kind of throw things together from what you have, put something together from raw materials. That’s what it has been like professionally. Being asked to do a special sequence on a television show is a lot of pressure. It’s a big deal, and you have to have that mind set of just jumping in and starting to make a mess. There’s a fearlessness in making art that I learned about at MassArt. Don’t worry up front about perfection — just dive in.

Being able to take risks with the art — that’s a really valuable skill to have that I learned at MassArt.

Q: Are there any professors in particular who stand out to you for their mentoring?

Alex: Steve Gentile. I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot from Leland Burke and Flip Johnson, too. I’m still in touch with Steve. We’re friends. We went to each other’s weddings.

Q: How did you choose MassArt in the first place?

Alex: I was deciding between MassArt and RISD. Those were the only schools I applied to, and I got into both. I picked MassArt because of just the feeling of the school. The money wasn’t an issue. MassArt delivered.

Q: What advice would you give to young artists deciding about going to college?

Alex: I feel like the biggest message to kids in school thinking about going to art school would be…You really can make your own opportunities.

Q: What opportunities are you and Lindsay making for yourselves now?

Alex: We’re working on a feature-length movie. We have some funding in place, some producers, but I’m not ready to reveal anything about the movie itself yet other than that we are looking for some kind of theatrical release rather than having it start on television. That would be great. But who knows? It’s a few years out.

Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera are schedule to visit MassArt this fall to talk to current Animation majors about their work and career since graduating in 2008/2009.